Transphobes want us to “return to science.” They might be surprised.
Note: I don’t engage with transphobes in the comment sections of any of my pieces. Good faith discourse rarely happens in comment sections, and it’s even rarer when dealing with reactionaries.
In the ongoing discourse wars about gender, trans people, and transphobia, conservatives and TERFs often opine that we have forgotten what science tells us about gender. In their minds, trans people and trans allies reject the scientific truth of sex-based difference. While some of their argument focuses on embodied differences such as differing genitals, much of their logic — a generous term! — hinges on the idea that “male” and “female” minds are inherently and meaningfully different. So, let’s do what they want: let’s return to the actual science and see what it tells us.
Let me first add the caveat that, as someone with a higher degree in Gender Studies and a related career in research, I have read lots of journal articles that purport to show important gendered differences in the human brain. I think some of these are demonstrably methodologically unsound, and that others point to interesting ways that brains can be socialized into different sets of behaviors and thought processes. What I do not think is that any of them make an infallible argument in support of the idea that “male” and “female” brains are oceans apart. I say this because I imagine that the comment section of this article might fill up with citations to this or that academic article, and I’m simply not interested. Even if I haven’t read the article already, I can fairly well guarantee that the thrust of whatever article you send me can be rebutted by whatever article I send back. My goal is not to critique every single article on gender and the brain; it is to problematize sexist and transphobic views on the subject.
As a second caveat, I recognize that there are basic structural differences between “male” and “female” brains (such as weight); my point here is that those structural differences do not convincingly point to meaningful differences in how people interact with themselves, others, and the world more broadly.
First, science overwhelmingly shows us that our brains pick up on associations over time, and these implicit associations become beliefs about ourselves and the world (even if we do not explicitly endorse those beliefs). This has huge implications for how we come to think about gender, as studies have shown again, again, again, and again* that our social context (i.e., the cues, associations, and cultural attitudes we pick up) shape what we believe about gender, as well as the behaviors that flow from those beliefs. This is true not only at the individual level, but at the cultural level as well.
Indeed, boy and girl children (or at least, children assumed to be boys or girls) tend to be socialized so differently that they often form implicit beliefs and associations about gender at a shockingly early age. Boy and girl children are spoken to differently, given different toys, presumed to have different future hobbies and aspirations, and treated differently at school, to name a few examples. While some look at girls playing with dolls and boys playing with trucks and assume these behaviors to be innate, many gender scholars argue that these and similar behaviors are the sum total of gendered socialization. As Cordelia Fine argues in her unbeatable book “Delusions of Gender,” we can’t understand gender and the brain “without understanding how psychologically permeable is the skull … When the environment makes gender salient, [it] can change self-perception, alter interests, debilitate or enhance ability, and trigger unintentional discrimination … And these thoughts, attitudes and behaviours of yours, in turn, become part of the social context.”**
Scholars have tried to make countless arguments about gender-based differences in the human brain. One of the most indefatigable is that “male” brains are inherently logical, while “female” brains are hopelessly emotional and sensitive. At the risk of sounding too punny, let’s bring the idea of “Women are from Venus and Men are from Mars” back down to Earth.
First, it’s worth noting that even scientists whose life work hinges on the idea of the “logical male brain” vs. “empathetic female brain” admit weaknesses in their own work. For instance, clinical psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen has spent his academic career dividing men and women into the categories of “systematizing” (i.e., male and logical) versus “empathising” (i.e., female and emotional) brains. However, his research shows a hearty percentage of men have a supposedly “female” brain, a sizable percentage of women have a “male” brain, and many people have an equal balance of both (to use the crude terms employed by this type of research). Perhaps gender differences in the brain are not so clear-cut!†
Second, research shows that men’s supposed lack of sensitivity and women’s inability to be analytical are quite malleable when manipulated by their environment. For instance, men’s “unfeeling” minds prove surprisingly capable of empathizing when they are prompted accordingly (for an extended discussion of the gendered empathy myth, see Chapter 2 of Fine’s book). Similarly, women score significantly higher on mathematical and analytical tasks (typically thought to be the logical male’s domain!) when primed to believe that women are just as capable of these tasks as men — though women’s performance suffers when they are primed to believe the opposite (see for instance this, this, or this article).
As a third way of viewing the situation, the careers associated with the naturally logical man (e.g., mathematicians) and the empathizing woman (e.g., social work) do not hold up under scrutiny. For instance, men are overwhelmingly more likely to be involved in computer science in the U.S., and this is often chalked up to their magically analytical brains. However, in the early years of computer science, women were initially considered to be the best suited for building computers and programming because of their “nimble fingers” and patient minds — it was years later that women were pushed out of this field. In other words, gender differences that we often ascribe to brains tends to have roots in the (inequitable) norms of our sociocultural context.
Further, the idea of the “gendered career” fares even more poorly when taking sexual orientation into account (and I’m not the first to point out gendered brain differences hinge on the presumption of heterosexuality). If women are less likely to pursue careers involving manual labor, as conventional stereotypes would suggest, lesbians shatter that stereotype — and the same holds true for gay men in female-stereotyped jobs. Some may argue that this is because gay women and men’s brains are fundamentally different than their straight peers’ — a hotly-contested area of research in its own right, and a tad suspect given that researchers in this realm have also tried to correlate sexual orientation to finger size. It feels to me more plausible that cultural factors play into these trends. Indeed, research shows that job recruiters take sexual orientation into account when deciding what career a person is fit for: they are more likely to accept gay men into “female” jobs, for instance.
Let’s tackle an example that flows from the above. Some have argued that the wage gap is due to women’s innate desire to leave the workplace and attend to matters of the home. This desire, the argument goes, is grounded in women’s emotional and sensitive nature, which is inherently geared towards domesticity and the family (similar arguments chalk this up to hormones, though that’s complicated as well). How convenient that women’s sensitive proclivities predispose them to domestic sphere, since that’s exactly where patriarchy prefers them! Let’s set aside research that suggests the wage gap is present even when controlling for individual choice. Let’s also set aside that mothers are expected to leave jobs while fathers are not, a trend exacerbated by the pandemic. Instead, let’s look to other factors, which make a compelling argument that it is not the woman who decides not to pursue higher-paying, higher-power jobs in favor of domestic duties — it is the workplace that shuts her out.
First, there is the presence of hiring bias against women, which shows up again and again and again in research.†† This hiring bias is striking when hiring for organizational leadership positions. Further, the bias is present for mothers but not for fathers — which should lead us to wonder, again, whether it is women that opt out of work or work that opts out of her.
Second, women are less likely to be promoted compared to their male counterparts. In at least one study, this held true even when women had higher performance ratings than men. That same study found that this hiring bias was at least in part because men underestimate women’s aptitude for management roles (this has held true in other studies, which have found that men are promoted based on their “potential” while women are promoted based on performance). Amidst all this, even career development programs meant to nurture women into leadership roles seem to backfire by further entrenching sexism.
Third, there is ample evidence that this bias is not constrained to the hiring and promotion process. Rather, gender bias follows women throughout the advancement of their careers (if indeed they are able to advance) and in fact becomes amplified by additional factors related to sexism. For instance, women are less likely to be peer reviewers and editors of academic journals — which is thought to at least partially explain the lack of female academic authorship. Further, academic articles are judged to be of higher merit if they were written by men. Women’s careers are hampered by everything from receiving fewer patents to receiving fewer publication citations to experiencing increased stereotype threat as they advance in management and in male-dominated fields (for an extended discussion of the latter, see Chapter 3 of Fine’s book).
All of these factors have a cumulative effect. For instance, using just the above citations as an argument, a female professor may be less likely to be hired up-front than a man. If she is hired, her articles are reviewed primarily by men, who are less likely to approve her articles for publication — leading her to be less likely to receive promotion or tenure. Even when her articles are published, they receive fewer citations, making her scholarship less impactful overall. And if she does dare to have a family and a career, she may experience a motherhood penalty, or even her spouse’s sexist expectation that she put her career on hold rather than his. And thus, a female professor slips further and further behind her male peers.
The above does not even take into account myriad other factors that exclude women from the workplace and career success. These include everything from rampant sexual harassment (which can obstruct career advancement, partly because men may sexually harass specifically to “keep women down”) to sexist microaggressions to an inability to pay for childcare while working, even down to the lack of lactation rooms in the workplace. And we haven’t even mentioned the overwhelming amount of housework that falls uniquely on women (based partly on the myth that men simply “don’t see dirt” the way women do).
To be clear, I’m not about #girlbossing. I firmly believe capitalism is evil, and my thought here is not that we just need more women CEOs. Rather, my general point is that the tired argument that women are paid less simply because of their desire for domesticity (and corresponding disdain for the workplace) does not hold up under scrutiny.
There are countless other examples we could pick apart in order to undercut claims about gender-based brain differences (and wonderfully enough, brilliant minds are already doing so). Again, my point here is not to refute every single article that talks about gender-based brain difference, and I do not dispute the fact that there are some structural differences across different types of brains. Rather, the examples above (and many others!) complicate the story we are told about “male” and “female” brains.
On a final note, I firmly believe that if gender were inherently brain-based, we wouldn’t have to work so damn hard to shore up gender norms all the time. As a simplistic example, I was reminded of this the other day when I tried to use the women’s restroom (there was no gender-neutral option) at a restaurant. A woman grabbed my arm urgently and pulled me away from the women’s restroom, saying: “That’s the wrong one! That’s not the men’s room!” With a sense of resign, I pulled down my mask to show her that, in her eyes, I was actually “a woman.” Satisfied, she let go of my arm and allowed me to enter the women’s restroom — at which point I stood in front of the mirror fuming, thinking to myself: If gender is a fact of life, why do cisgender people exert such effort and energy trying to prove it’s real? Why go to so much trouble forcing all of us into gender norms if those norms are supposedly inherent to all of us?
For those of us who believe gender is a matter of social construction, the research in this essay hopefully provides an antidote to claims about the immutable gendered brain. After all, anything that has been constructed can also be deconstructed if we remain creative and persistent.
*These are just a smattering of examples. The research in this realm is both formidable and generally clear-cut.
**I owe Dr. Fine a deep debt of gratitude, as her book both illuminated my understanding of neurosexism and provided many of the citations in the empathy/systematizing portion of this piece. Additionally, although I am unable to provide page numbers due to reading an online version of Fine’s book, the text is easily searchable if you click this PDF and search for the quotation or chapter in question. For those of you who may worry that I’m praising a book I haven’t bought myself, my copy is in the mail!
†Anyone who clicks through this link will note that the cited article is, in part, about the gender-based underpinnings of autism. This is actually yet another reason why gender-based differences in the brain deserve to be debunked: they have ripple effects on other fields of study, such as (in this case) neurodivergence. Baron-Cohen’s Systematizing and Empathising Quotients have been used to assess for autism, with the assumption that people high on systematizing and low on empathizing (e.g., typically the “male” brain) are autistic. This sort of assumption leads to the profound under-diagnosing of women who are autistic.
††It’s worth noting that this, like most research on gender bias, is a contested area of study.
